Physics / mechanism

Photonics is the generation, manipulation, and detection of photons—typically across UV, visible, NIR, and mid-IR spectra. Unlike electronics, signal carriers have zero rest mass, enabling propagation at c with negligible resistive loss. Key parameters: wavelength (λ), refractive index (n), group velocity dispersion (GVD), insertion loss (dB), and extinction ratio (dB). Platform state-of-the-art: silicon photonics achieves ~1 dB/cm waveguide loss at 1550 nm, InP lasers hit sub-100 kHz linewidth, LiNbO₃ modulators reach >100 GHz bandwidth. Co-packaged optics in datacenter switching is pushing integration density toward 1.6 Tb/s per package. Quantum photonics and mid-IR sensing are the frontier growth vectors.

Competitive landscape

Silicon photonics (SiPh) competes with and complements III-V (InP, GaAs), polymer waveguides, and emerging platforms like silicon nitride (SiN) and thin-film LiNbO₃. Each trades off loss, nonlinearity, active gain, and CMOS foundry compatibility differently.

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Merged from photonics-optics (archived 2026-05-07)

Hyphenated variant. Photonics is the canonical concept; ‘photonics-optics’ was an Attio-tag-derived duplicate.

Photonics & Optics

Kind: technology

Physics / mechanism

Photonics exploits photons rather than electrons as information or energy carriers. Core physics: Maxwell’s equations govern propagation; waveguide confinement via total internal reflection (silicon-on-insulator rib waveguides, ~450 nm × 220 nm cross-sections); modulation via Pockels effect (LiNbO₃, BTO) or plasma dispersion (Si). Key figures of merit: insertion loss (target <1 dB/cm), electro-optic bandwidth (>100 GHz demonstrated in thin-film LiNbO₃), extinction ratio (>20 dB), and V_π·L (sub-1 V·cm now achievable). Silicon photonics dominates datacentre interconnect at 400G–1.6T; III-V (InP, GaAs) leads coherent and sensing; emerging platforms include SiN (ultralow loss, ~0.1 dB/m), lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI), and BTO-on-Si. Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) are manufactured on 200/300 mm CMOS-compatible lines, enabling co-integration with electronics.

Competitive landscape

Competing carrier: RF/microwave electronics dominate sub-100 GHz comms but hit energy and bandwidth walls above that. Competing photonic platforms pit silicon photonics (low cost, CMOS-native) against InP (monolithic laser integration, higher cost) and polymer waveguides (flexible, lossy). For sensing, MEMs and RF radar compete with LiDAR and optical coherence. Quantum photonics (single-photon sources, entangled pairs) is an adjacent but distinct segment.

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